Applying ethical principles to an ethical dilemma Summary of a suicidal patient case study  NHS FPX 4000

Health care professionals face ethical dilemmas during practice due to many reasons. Some of the reasons are medical errors leading to blame culture, assisted suicide, patient information privacy, life support decision based on decision-making authority, negligence, and other ethical dilemmas (Park et al., 2015). The purpose of this paper is to analyze a patient suicide case study ethical dilemma to apply an ethical decision-making model to mitigate the issue. 

The case is of a patient, Mr. Green who has suicide tendencies after admitting to the health care facility. Mr. Green is an old gentleman who is 57 years old. The patient was admitted to the oncology unit of the health care facility in Brisbane, Australia. Seven years ago, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer but did not take surgical and medical treatment. The patient chose alternative therapy and treatment but has failed to follow up on his condition with the assigned urologist since then. Now, he has contracted hypoproteinemia and anemia. A series of diagnostics tests were conducted and it was found that cancer has metastasized to the bones (Jie, 2015). 

Further, the spread has reached lymph nodes, the tumor has invaded the bladder and affected the functioning of the left kidney. It was estimated that he will live for six to twelve months, but the latest diagnosis after the cystoscopy indicated that tumor growth was fast and he will live for four to six weeks. Further, it was determined that medical or surgical interventions are not possible at this time. The health care professionals suggested palliative care. However, the patient informed the nurse that he had enough and want to end his life, but urged the nurse to disclose this information and intentions to anyone (Jie, 2015). This constitutes an ethical dilemma as keeping communication with the patient, honoring their wishes, and promoting health by fulfilling nurse responsibilities collide with each other (Suhonen et al., 2018). 

Ethical dilemma in the case study

It is the nurse’s duty to discuss different options with the patient to make a decision that is based on the patient’s choice and wish (Awenat et al., 2017). For example, a patient on life support can give decision-making rights to his family member to take the right decision when he is not capable of decision-making (Campo-Engelstein et al., 2015). However, in this case, the decision to end the life is against the core responsibilities of a nurse. Further, health care professional should keep their conversation with the patients confidential. However, the issue leads to legal, philosophical, moral, and professional dilemmas as ending a life and keeping the information private is against the professional practice code of nursing (Goligher et al., 2017). For example, a nurse can persuade a patient with terminally ill cancer not to drink or smoke to extend the possibility of life. Another example is midwives can highlight the complexities of normal birth in a particular case to suggest a caesarian (Diema Konlan et al., 2019). Another aspect is even if the nurse honors the wish of the patient, the intervention to end the life should be well-thought and based on clinical outcomes. Suicide attempts leading to more complex problems and patient not dying reflects poor decision-making even though patient’s autonomy was considered (Goligher et al., 2017). For example, health care assisted suicide poses less risk compared to individual suicide attempts without precautions (Goligher et al., 2017). 

Individual ethical decision-making consists of understanding moral awareness of the case based on individual, organizational, and cultural values and morals then make the judgment based on communication, issue analysis, and exploring options, and finally acting based on different aspects to make the right decision to the case (Snyder Sulmasy & Mueller, 2017). Thus, the most important ethical dilemma faced by the nurse in this situation is whether to inform other health professionals and violate patient’s consent and autonomy or keep the secret and subject self against moral and professional responsibility as a nurse and as a human (Jie, 2015). This constitutes the moral awareness aspect of ethical decision-making. 

Assessment 1 Applying Ethical Principles